


Midnight Chats

by danvssomethingorother



Category: The Venture Bros
Genre: Gen, M/M, hatred is mentioned in the beginning but he's not really here, me making canon gayer, relationships are more implied but if I continue they will be more explicit in the story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 08:42:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16573325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danvssomethingorother/pseuds/danvssomethingorother
Summary: Pete has a talk with Rusty about his relationship with Billy. Based on 'The Silent Partners'





	Midnight Chats

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aactionjohnny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aactionjohnny/gifts).



> For being an all around awesome person, I wrote this for my friend. I hope you enjoy!

There was a deep loneliness settling somewhere inside him. It might have been there for years, but it had been easy to ignore. These feelings were nothing more then an annoying fly that ended up in the trailer, it buzzed around and messed up his high score, but Billy was always there to swat it away.

He was afraid Billy would never be here again to swat away that feeling, have it forever buzz around the vacant, hollow trailer like it had done before. When Billy had left him all those years ago before Brock returned him to him, a little damaged, a little broken but still Billy. He could only hope that would happen again.

In college he always had Rusty to swat away those feelings, maybe not as delicately as Billy did now but Rusty was always someone who would be there. No matter what the man lying next to him tried to say, Rusty was his best friend. He didn’t know how to place the man any other way into his life. Billy was something else, something a little more personal and maybe only someone like Rusty would understand that.

He rose from his sleeping bag and sighed deeply, he couldn’t take the buzzing anymore, he needed to get out of here.

Hatred was loud. Everything about this damn man was loud and invasive, even his snoring felt like it was reaching into Pete and trying to tell him he was wrong. He rolled over and glared hard at the man but wasn’t the type to start shit like Rusty.

But he wasn’t going to just take it either like Billy always did, he got up from the hard panic - room floor and decided this safe house wasn’t worth his sanity.

Some body guard, he didn’t even stir as the man he was charged to protect got up and left the ‘safe house’.

He smiled at the familiar white noise of machines running and Rusty Venture himself bossing his robot around from the other side of the lab.

“No, I don’t want dinner, I want you to go get the coffee I asked you to bring me.”

He was sitting at his work bench with his back to Pete and Helper hovering over him like a mother hen beeping away, waving his arms at Rust who just sighed loudly.

“Fine, I will get what I want myself,” Rusty grumbled finally rising from his spot, throwing the pen across the table that he had been using and finally noticing someone else was in the room with them.

“When I let Brock storm in here and do what he wanted, taking both my body guard and my safe room, I expected you to stay in there until he came back for you.”

“Have you ever tried to stay in a room with Hatred for longer then an hour? He smells like moldy cat litter and he gets way into your personal bubble with his foot boils and he keeps bringing up his ex-wife, I feel like I’m in just as much danger in there with mister midlife crisis then out here waiting for the vampires.” 

Rusty looked less then impressed with his excuses rolling his eyes and sighing out a soft ‘whatever’ before moving towards the staircase to leave the lab. 

Pete followed his friend to the kitchen, complaining to him the entire way about the traumatic event that was sharing a tight space with Hatred for an entire day. 

The compound felt so empty this late at night, no one up but a sleep deprived Rusty who knowing him probably hadn’t seen his bedroom in since yesterday morning. The bags under his eyes certainly held up this theory and the way he kept fumbling with the coffee machine, seemingly unable to do the simple task right.

Whether that was lack of sleep or how Rusty was genuinely unable to be self-reliant with simple house hold chores was up in the air. Pete gently shoved his friend aside and threw the soggy filter with lumped coffee grounds in it to the side and prepared the coffee himself.

Rusty as usual didn’t thank him but he did grunt his way, that was something Pete supposed. He settled at the kitchen table while Pete finished the task, he would usually complain but just doing something, keeping his hands and mind busy made him feel better. Cleaning the few dishes in the sink, digging out the creamer and sugar, digging through his memories how the hell Rusty liked his coffee, that kept his mind off the guilt and loneliness filling him without Billy here.

He set the cup in front of Rusty who was sitting at the table trying in vain to scrub the exhaustion from his eyes with one hand, while the other held his glasses.

“Whatcha working on down there?”

“A cure for annoying albinos in my panic room, ya got one?”

Pete smirked not taking it personally, setting the coffee beside the man and sitting next to him, the warm cup against his cold hands was enough to relax him. An exhausted Rusty and a cup of coffee felt like college. He sipped at his coffee letting the warm filling of nostalgia run through him remembering every project they held off till the last second and had to throw together right before class started.

“Brock must have you wrapped around his finger for you to just let him come in and lay down the ground rules like that.”

Pete’s smirk just grew larger watching that glare land hard on him, it wasn’t any different then college. Rust had a thing for Brock that long, Pete never missed his long stares at his room mate while they were trying to ‘study’. Rusty nearly tipping over his chair and almost breaking his pencil thin neck trying to get a better look at his room mate while he bent over and collected his things and then trying to pass it off like he fell off his chair getting his pencil.

“I owed Brock a solid and its not like I was using the panic room and Hatred is pretty useless, “Rusty brushed off easily and firmly taking a long sip from his coffee, “If anything you are doing me a favor keeping him in there. He was getting on my nerves.” 

“Oh, you are so full of it,” Pete snickered elbowing his friend making him choke on his coffee and glare at him harder, “You have been lusting for that man since college!”

“What? Where the hell did you ---”

Pete cut him off with a shit eating grin and pressing his hand against his mouth to keep him from going off and waking up the entire house hold. Or worse yet, alerting sergeant buzz kill he was out and about. 

“Oh, you are in so much damn denial! Just tell Brock you love him and maybe he’ll come back for good!”

The buzz of loneliness was simmering down just being around Rusty like this, it was just like college. Rust never changed, he was looking away, simmering at the mere suggestion he was anything but straight.

There was a subtle touch of guilt settling on his expression he was trying to hide so hard with anger and offense at his friend’s words. A guilt that hit a little too close to home, he was staring almost longingly at the kitchen’s entrance, almost waiting for Brock to come in like he always had in the past. The way his eyes finally rested on his coffee telegraphing every guilty thought, blaming himself for Brock leaving.

Maybe Pete was reading too much into it, but he doubted it, he had known the man too long and saw the way he had lit up when Brock walked through his door again. The way he saw him sink into himself from the window in the bunker when Brock just left after dropping Pete off to Hatred.

He was up right now not because of some important project, he was waiting for Brock to come back. Hoping he would stay.

Like Pete was hoping Billy would come back and when he came back despite it all, hoping he would stay with him anyway. Stay with him even if this entire mess was almost entirely his fault. He always got Billy into this shit, never the other way around.

“I’m in denial?” Rust hissed at him, “What about you?”

Pete sank into himself, kicking himself for riling Rusty up like this, of course it was going to loop back towards Billy and Pete’s private feelings for him if he teased Rusty about his crush. 

“You and Billy are glued at the hip. I haven’t seen you without him in like twenty years, you expect me to believe two straight guys just live together in a tiny trailer and never leave each other’s sides?”

“Are you sure we aren’t still talking about you and Brock?” Pete tried to snicker, but it came out hollow. That low buzzing returning in him, the guilt growing, that primal fear that when this was all said and done Billy would finally be done with him. Just as Brock, the most loyal man he knew, became tired of Rusty.

He expected Rusty to make fun of him, dig into his wound and bleed it dry like he would do anyone else but to his surprise he didn’t. He just sighed leaning back in his chair and stared firmly at his friend.

“Billy will be fine,” he grumbled uneasily, he had been taught from a young age being gentle or kind was a weakness, Pete knew better then anyone how hard it was for him. He heard far more then he would have ever wanted about what Jonas did to his son when Rust was drunk and feeling open. The fact he was trying was enough to make Pete smile.

“You’ll go back to being conjoined twins before you know it, Brock has never failed.”

Pete rested his hand on Rusty’s hand seeing that guilt and fear shimmering in his eyes matching Pete’s own, he was more then a little surprised when he didn’t pull away.

“But what if he don’t want to come back? If he’s tired of me constantly dragging him down…”

Rusty made a half shrug, shoulders exhaustedly falling back to his sides before he could even get them all the way up.

“You can’t stop it,” Rusty muttered doing the unexpected by squeezing his friend’s hand comfortingly, “If he wants to go, he just will….”

Pete didn’t know why but the dam just broke at those words. He had been holding back tears since Billy had gone missing. He latched onto Rusty in the most awkward hug that unsurprisingly wasn’t returned by the man who just tensed hard in the hold.

All he could think of was how he kept failing him and never trying to better himself. Always letting Billy down, always getting him in these situations and Billy always came out worse then Pete did every single time.

Who would want to stay like this?

Pete wanted to make it up to him so badly if he came back, he would change, he really would this time but there was just no guarantee Billy would be around for his change to mean much.

“Will you always be here, though?”

He felt like a child crying to his parent and feeling Rusty’s hand awkwardly rest on his head, in a weird attempt to be comforting he melted into the man as he sighed in defeat untensing and allowed Pete to tighten his hold on him without a fight.

“Where the hell would I go?”

It wasn’t a loving reassurance or anything but that wasn’t the stuff Rusty Venture was made of. Just the fact he was allowing Pete to latch onto him like this told him deep down he cared about him and that was all Pete needed right now.


End file.
